At the southern tip of Lake Michigan, an hour’s drive from Chicago, lies one of the country’s most biodiverse national parks. Shoreline birds build their homes along the coastal habitat. Prairie grass, woodlands and wetlands reminiscent of the Everglades fringe the trails that lace through Indiana Dunes National Park.
Each year millions of people marvel at this pocket of natural beauty sandwiched between a stretch of steel plants — almost 3 million visitors generated $206 million in revenue for local communities in 2023 — but the efforts required to maintain the delicate balance of such varied ecosystems often occur behind the scenes and are far from glamorous.
Eric Anderson managed wildfire risks and restored habitat through controlled burns in the 15,000-acre park, which relies on fire to thrive and sprawls close to urban residential areas.
“The people doing this kind of work tend to do this because they love it,” said Anderson, who left a higher-paying job in corporate consulting to pursue the National Park Service’s mission: to preserve natural resources for future generations.
Two weeks ago his role in that mission ended when he was fired alongside three others. They were among the 1,000 probationary park service staff members terminated as President Donald Trump’s administration freezes funding and slashes personnel across federal agencies. On Thursday, a federal judge in San Francisco found that the recent mass firings of probationary employees were likely unlawful, granting temporary relief to a coalition of labor unions and nonprofits that have sued the presidential administration over the cuts.
The future of protected natural spaces and the ability of these places to provide recreation and education became more precarious Wednesday after Trump ordered federal agencies to come up with plans to reduce permanent staff members by March 13.
“Since 2010, park staffing has gone down 20%, but park visitation has gone up 16% — so these park staff are resilient folks who have been doing more with less,” said Crystal Davis, Midwest senior regional director for the National Parks Conservation Association, a nonpartisan organization that advocates on behalf of the parks system. But the current changes are wide-reaching, she said, with a “devastating impact.”
Davis said dozens of people in 53 national parks across 11 states in the region have been fired, including at Pullman National Historical Park in Chicago. Areas managed by the U.S. Forest Service have also been affected; in Will County, a dozen staff members were fired at Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie.
“The way that it’s happened, so fast and so furiously, it’s remarkable. It’s unprecedented. There’s law, policy and procedure in place that prohibits this type of thing from happening, so the fact that it is happening is very scary,” said Emilie Harvey, an education specialist at Midewin who was terminated Feb. 15. “It’s very important to me that people realize there’s human beings that are being fired, not just a faceless mass of people.”
In addition, more than 700 year-round Park Service employees have taken buyouts, according to a Wednesday Los Angeles Times report citing an internal email sent to supervisors last month.
Advocates say the timing of personnel changes at the parks — which besides resource managers include rangers as well as administrative and janitorial employees — will likely affect the public’s experience as warm weather approaches and visitor numbers climb.
That has already happened at Pullman.
A class field trip to the park had to be postponed after the ranger who helped coordinate it was fired, according to a teacher at Naperville North High School.
“I’ve been following the news that there were a great deal of cuts across the national parks and that the rangers were losing their jobs,” said Jack Wright, who teaches a class in Chicago history. “I just didn’t expect — and this could have been naive of me — to have it so swiftly and directly impact the students in my classroom.”
Trump has promoted the massive federal workforce overhaul as necessary to ensure efficiency.
“We’re cutting down the size of government. We have to,” Trump said during the first Cabinet meeting of his second term. “We’re bloated. We’re sloppy. We have a lot of people that aren’t doing their job.”
A regional spokesperson said the National Park Service is implementing the president’s policies across the federal civilian workforce as the agency assesses its most critical staffing needs. “However, it is NPS policy not to comment on personnel matters,” the spokesperson said.
But advocates and those fired at the forest and park services say the cuts will only set back local and regional economies, ecological restoration and conservation efforts, and the educational opportunities and outreach that the agencies support.
“What I’ve been hearing is that, regardless of the intention,” said Davis of the National Parks Conservation Association, “to make government smaller or to streamline positions — whatever the intention is, the impact does not match.”
Emily Reusswig, vice president of conservation and policy at environmental nonprofit Openlands, said the executive directive to fire employees in the forest service and other federal agencies might appear to save a lot of money.
“But the chaos it creates doesn’t,” she said. “And when budgets are cut in nonstrategic ways, that trickles down to the regional economy.”
Towns that neighbor the Indiana Dunes are concerned that fewer staff members to run the park will lead to fewer summer visitors, a big economic driver in northwest Indiana. Portage businesses that attract parkgoers include hotels, restaurants and retailers, from small businesses to a Bass Pro Shops location for outdoor equipment.
“It’s kind of a cross your fingers, hold your breath and let’s see what happens,” said Jerry Czarnecki, executive director of the Greater Portage Chamber of Commerce. “The economy goes up and down for a variety of reasons. It’s just unfortunate that we have to put worry into this segment of it, because in the past (that) has been a given for us.”
Restoration at a standstill
A few hours before he was set to celebrate Valentine’s Day with his wife, Anderson received the letter in his email inbox. His eyes scanned the first page, then landed at the bottom.
“The department determined that you have failed to demonstrate fitness or qualification for continued employment because your subject matter, knowledge, skills and abilities do not meet the department’s current needs, and it is necessary and appropriate to terminate during the probationary period your appointment,” the notice from management read.
He felt adrenaline rush to his head. “I couldn’t really read much further,” he told the Tribune.
It was a similar experience for the thousand federal employees who were fired during their one- or two-year probationary periods.
Anderson started in 2021 as a seasonal worker and then spent the next three years working under short-term contracts, experiences he said improved his qualifications and eventually made him indispensable to the park’s work. He became permanent in mid-June 2024, a role that came with a “significant” pay cut.
“But I really wanted the mission-focused work. I wanted to feel like — I needed to feel and know that what I’m doing is helping America,” he said. His probationary status would’ve ended in four months, “providing I met the qualifications and the standards that they were up to. I will say I was on the path to doing that in every way.”
“It took me a couple of days to realize this isn’t about me. I have evaluations that say I’m exceeding expectations,” Anderson said.
At the Indiana Dunes, wildfires are common because of the heavy industry and railroad tracks. A small ember from an engine can spark a fire that spreads quickly and threatens nearby residents. The park’s fire crew — made up of around 10 workers and others hired on a short-term, as-needed basis — responds and swiftly tamps down the threat.
“It’s usually wrapped up within that day, within a few hours. So the (fires) don’t make the news, which is good,” he said. “There are a number of neighborhoods that have been built in some of those dunes with beautiful lake views, but they’ve got this very volatile environment surrounding them.”
However, the funding line to hire additional short-term workers for the fire crew has been frozen, as has the park’s overtime budget, which means operations have to be finished by 4:30 p.m. “But nature doesn’t stop because the clock is getting punched,” Anderson said.
The fire crew also proactively sets controlled burns to clear dry leaves and revitalize the ecosystem. Those typically happen alongside restoration projects that reintroduce native plants and root out invasive species like autumn olive.
“With restoration work, it’s really critical to continue to treat areas that have already been treated, so that they don’t revert back,” said Betsy Maher, executive director of Save the Dunes, a northwest Indiana nonprofit that protects and advocates for the national park. “The goal is to get it to a place where it’s in a healthy state and the invasive species have essentially been eradicated, but (it) can take years and years to get to that point.”
“That’s the thing about all of this: Ecological restoration, establishing native plants — it doesn’t happen in year one. It’s going to be a (long-term) thing, and it’s going to change a little bit every year,” Anderson said.
Several critical habitat restoration projects have been paused, Maher said, given that they are funded mostly through federal grants, which were frozen, though most of that funding has been unfrozen.
“But we are at risk of continuing to be clawed back,” she said. “So planning is at a standstill at this stage. And right now, the plan is to do zero restoration projects in the coming year.”
Similarly, at Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie, the first stage of a large-scale restoration project has been paused as a $1.5 million grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation was put on hold earlier this month because of the federal funding freeze. The initial phase involves removing invasive trees; some of them shrubby, some of them large, mature and harder to take out, which requires costly equipment. It’s a necessary step before restoring the natural meandering patterns of the site’s streams and then planting native prairie and grassland seeds.
“We’re trying to do our best to triage, to create a restoration plan that’s now focused on not going backward,” said Reusswig of Openlands, which is partnering with nonprofit The Wetlands Initiative to carry out the project at Midewin.
As the grantee, Openlands has spent around $450,000 in supplies and contracts that have not been reimbursed because of the freeze, which is also putting in jeopardy the jobs of more than a dozen contracted tree care staff. Restarting the project will cost thousands of dollars because of the size and complexity of the vehicles being used on the 1,400-acre project site.
At the Indiana Dunes, most projects are funded by park entry fees, collected by seasonal workers during the busy months. In 2023, these fees covered 22 projects that totaled $1.86 million. While 5,000 seasonal positions across the country’s parks have been exempt from the federal hiring freeze, Maher said the fear of more cuts is still looming.
In the meantime, Save the Dunes is spearheading a campaign for community members to contact their congressional representatives and urge them to help restore the jobs lost and protect the park from future funding and staffing cuts.
“We’ve heard from community members who have said that they’ve reached out to their representative for the first time ever in their lives because this issue means so much to them,” she said.
There has also been a surge of interest in volunteering opportunities, which can be found on the park’s website at nps.gov/indu or coordinated by emailing [email protected].
“It’s just really heartbreaking,” Maher said. “These are people that are part of our community (who) are losing their jobs, that love what they do and put their whole hearts into what they do.”
Connecting culture and ecology
In parks such as Pullman on Chicago’s South Side, culture and history come to life.
“We have some very rural landscapes that are beautiful and scenic,” said Davis of the National Parks Conservation Association. “But then we also have parks like Pullman in Chicago, where it is not just a place of recreation, it is actually a historical institution that … is the bedrock of a community, a safe haven in that community.”
Field trips there complement classroom learning in ways that stick with students, according to Wright, the Naperville North teacher.
For juniors and seniors taking his elective class, visiting the park is a memorable opportunity to learn about the country’s first planned factory town, created by industrialist George Mortimer Pullman, who wanted to improve the living conditions of his company’s workers — as well as the strike over high rent and low wages, which became a watershed moment in Chicago’s rich history of labor organizing.
So when an email came from the ranger who would’ve guided the class field trip, saying it had to be canceled because he’d been fired, Wright felt a “gut punch.”
“The thing that just really struck me was that in any way, shape or form, student learning would be encumbered by a federal cut,” he said. “If I think about what makes America great, it’s having a National Park Service that offers outreach opportunities to local education.”
Growing up, Harvey didn’t know Midewin existed even though she lived 20 minutes away. For the past year and a half, she worked to ensure that’s not the case for other young people, familiarizing them with the sprawling 20,000 acres as a natural resource education specialist with the U.S. Forest Service.
Her main goal, she said, was planting a “seed of love” for the planet and the environment.
In the last fiscal year, the four-person education unit at Midewin ran 90 programs that taught 4,300 people, participated in 33 community events that reached almost 10,000 people and ran youth outreach that reached hundreds of people.
The educators at Midewin, all in two-year probationary positions, were among those fired. So were another eight people from different units. The dozen employees made up a third of the prairie’s non-firefighting staff.
“The Agency finds, based on your performance, that you have not demonstrated that your further employment at the Agency would be in the public interest,” Harvey’s letter read.
All the termination letters basically said the same thing. “Which I feel also shows what nonsense it is,” Harvey said.
“I continue to try to not take this personally because they know nothing about what I do day to day,” Harvey said. “The people that I work with, or worked with, were incredibly knowledgeable, talented at what they do, and worked extremely hard. So these clips of Trump with this idea of federal workers being lazy and bureaucrats — it cannot be further from the truth.”
Siobhan Solkowksi-Peacy, one of Harvey’s colleagues in the education unit, echoed that sentiment: “Our appraisal and awards for the work we did say different.” She had been working with the U.S. Forest Service at Midewin for over a decade in different capacities, as a seasonal worker at first before being brought on full-time.
Like other career civil servants who were fired, Solkowksi-Peacy was considered a probationary employee only because she had been given a new title even though the work was essentially the same.
In the last few weeks, Solkowksi-Peacy has been opening and reading thank-you cards that a class of fourth graders sent to her home.
“I don’t want to look at them all at once, because I’m kind of sad,” she said. “It’s really hard to not be able to see those kids.”
Despite Midewin’s size — equal to about 1,000 football fields — not many people know about it, said Reusswig of Openlands.
“In a large metropolitan area like Chicago, engaging people to the land and our native heritage, cultural and ecological, is so important to ensure that these lands continue to be protected in the future,” she added.
What’s next
In their termination letters, workers were told they could appeal the decision with the Merit Systems Protection Board. Earlier in February, however, Trump terminated the chairwoman of the three-person board. While she has been temporarily reinstated, the Trump administration has appealed, adding to concerns of arbitrary retaliation toward the administrative judges — especially as they could be replaced with presidential appointees.
According to the letter Anderson from the Indiana Dunes received, any termination concerns related to whistleblowing or protected activities could also be appealed to the U.S. Office of Special Counsel. Last month, Trump fired the head of the office, an action later temporarily blocked by an appellate court. After the president reappealed the decision, the Supreme Court said it would not interfere with the lower court. On Wednesday, the appellate judge said she would extend the Special Counsel reinstatement through at least March 1.
“Again, this isn’t about me. This is about what happens when they decide to go after the workers that are permanent … and they send out a mass firing,” Anderson said. “These are the two places that you’re supposed to be able to appeal to, right? And that, to me, is the bigger story that hasn’t been played out yet … that’s the thing that’s gonna really hurt a lot of folks.”
These moves to reduce the civil service have compounded workers’ apprehension. Harvey, one of the educators at Midewin, had been bracing for the worst since Inauguration Day, agonizingly waiting for the other shoe to drop.
“I can’t even begin to describe how horrible the last month has been. I’m not a crier. I cried a lot. All of us did,” she said.
When she accepted her dream job, she told people she would work there until retirement.
“It was such a blow to have that ripped away from me for no reason, essentially,” she said. “I don’t have hope that I’ll be reinstated. And, quite frankly, it would be a very scary thing to get reinstated under this administration.”
The nonprobationary workers, spared from the first cuts, have been riddled with uncertainty.
“There has been continued messaging from the executive office that they’re coming after these funds and positions in different ways, so the fear is there, and that has plummeted morale. It’s not good at all,” said Maher of Save the Dunes.
Meanwhile, parks are more popular than ever. The NPS recorded 325.5 million recreational visits in 2023. That number was more than twice the attendance at professional football, baseball, basketball and hockey games combined that year. Visits to parks increased 4% from 2022, and 20 parks set a record for annual visits.
National parks and similarly protected public lands are not only tourist destinations but safe places of respite, Maher said. “Something happens when you’re on the shores of Lake Michigan, where you get by a body of water and it’s like hitting a reset button,” she said.
“These parks tell all of our stories; these are the keepers of our history and our legacies. So it’s imperative that we make sure that these places are preserved in their entirety,” said Davis of the National Parks Conservation Association. “There is never a time that our parks should be politicized. And a threat to one park is a threat to all of them.”
The Associated Press contributed.
